1717 River Rd, Fair Lawn, NJ

Original Grocery Tenant: ShopRite

Address: 1717 River Rd, Fair Lawn, NJ

Opened: 1990s

Closed: June 15, 2023

Later Tenants: TBA
Photographed: June 16, 2023

The new ShopRite of Fair Lawn opened yesterday and on Thursday night, this little ShopRite on River Road closed in preparation for the new store. The 49,000 square foot store was built in the 90s on the site of a former Stop & Shop and was replaced with the new store in a former Pathmark.

There was clearly some confusion over this move, given that in the 10 or so minutes I spent photographing the store, at least half a dozen people attempted to shop here, such as the person seen in the blue shirt above. There was some work going on inside, likely to remove any remaining merchandise or fixtures, and the workers occasionally turned people away.

We don't get to see too much inside the store, but if you want to see what it looked like when it was in business, check out my previous post here.

The carts were being stored in the motorized ramp to the parking lot, along with some in the foyer.

As we can see, the store was in pretty bad shape when it closed. The interior aside, there was clear damage to the building, such as rust from the metal parts and broken glass blocks all around the building. That's not post-closure damage -- no way that builds up in the 12 hours between the store's closing and my visit.

You can see exactly what I mean with the awning below.

Although the ShopRite lettering on the back of the store had been painted over, it was still pretty visible, at least if you looked hard enough!

A rumor on Facebook said that Inserra is holding onto this property to use it as an e-commerce fulfillment center, but it's not clear whether that will actually happen. The property isn't being advertised as for-lease, at least not yet.

The parking lot signage for ShopRite is still there, just turned backwards...

And it's not clear to me whether this Available sign refers to the small vacancies in the strip mall next to the former ShopRite, or to the store itself.

You can still clearly see what the sign used to say!

That's all for this store, and if it ever becomes a supermarket again, you can be sure I'll check it out! But tomorrow we have a few more news items over on The Independent Edition!